At 12:32 PM -0700 10/23/03, Dare Obasanjo wrote:
>I see, instead of countering or agreeing with my point you throw an
>anti-Microsoft slur instead. Either way, the point still stands that
>web technologies like CSS are based on shared data models not just
>shared syntax. Syntax based interop is a great start but it isn't
>the end all and be all of interoperability on the Web.
>
Mostly I just want to make really sure no one confuses XOM with DOM.
But when Microsoft accuses me of embracing and extending a standard,
all I can think is, "Hello, pot? This is the kettle calling. You're
black."
But on the point, I don't think DOM and CSS are interoperable; and
for a long time I did blame Microsoft's atrocious implementations of
these specs for sorry state. But maybe it's really not Microsoft's
fault. Maybe no one could correctly implement data model
interchangeability. Maybe the problem is the fundamental flaw of
trying to exchange a data model rather than syntax. Why have things
like XML-RPC and SOAP succeeded where more data-model driven
technologies like CORBA, RMI, and DCOM failed? Why have even more
syntax-oriented systems such as REST and RSS done even better than
half-breeds like SOAP and XML-RPC? Why are the syntax based systems
so much easier to implement? Why does it seem the further a system
gets from syntax, the worse it works?
I'm not a theoretical proponent of syntax like Walter Perry. I'm an
experimentalist and an observer. I look out in the world, and I see
syntax-based systems working far better and coming into production so
much more easily than the data model systems. I think at this point
in time the burden is on the data model proponents to demonstrate
that their systems are interoperable and implementable. They
certainly haven't proven that with DOM, CSS, and XSLT, If these are
the best examples you've got of interoperable data models, then there
are real problems.
--
Elliotte Rusty Harold
elharo@metalab.unc.edu
Processing XML with Java (Addison-Wesley, 2002)
http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xmljavahttp://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0201771861/cafeaulaitA